Critical Race Theory

by Tom Kando

There has been a big brouhaha about “Critical Race Theory.” The people on the Right (heinous figures such as Tucker Carlson) are on a rampage to censor this subject from schools. The label “C.R.T.” joins “Socialism” on the list of American political taboos. States that are currently legislating such censorship include Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee., Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Arizona. 

I have been wondering why the Right has chosen this particular topic as the special target for its wrath, over and beyond its obvious perennial opposition to civil rights, “wokeness,” and all steps towards racial equality. 

Shouldn’t we find out what Critical Race Theory actually IS? There is probably no more sociological topic than this, so I will try to shed some light on it. 

I am once again stimulated by an excellent New Yorker article, The Man Behind Critical Race Theory by Jelani Cobb. The main name to associate with C.R.T. is Derrick Bell (1930-2011). He was a lawyer, professor and civil rights activist. He worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, became the first tenured African-American law professor at Harvard in 1971 and ended his career as a visiting professor at the NYU School of Law. He and his writings are the most influential source behind what is now known as Critical Race Theory. 

First a brief definition of C.R.T.: This is a legal movement which seeks to explain the intersection of race and US law. It is critical not only of the conservative response to racism, but also the liberal approach. It stresses that racial inequality is the result of social, institutional and legal realities rather than that of intentional individual prejudices. 

A Review of ‘Citadels of Pride: Sexual Assault, Accountability and Reconciliation’

by Madeleine Kando

The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written many books on the subject of Justice and Morality. The title of her book ‘Citadels of Pride’ made me curious, not only because of its subject, but the title itself. What does the word Pride mean in the Context of Sexual Violence?

As Nussbaum explains, pride, which is actually the first of the seven deadly sins in Christianity, (followed by greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth) is the inability to see others as real, because you feel you are above them. There are many kinds of pride: class pride, race pride, national pride and gender pride. Gender pride is so deeply baked into our society, that we are not even aware of it.

The central features of what makes for a ‘full human being’, are autonomy and subjectivity. Autonomy means that you can make your own choices in life. Until recently, women were denied voting rights, choice in marriage and access to education. Subjectivity means that everyone has a right to their own inner experience, their own way of looking at the world. That is why we have Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association.

When it comes to sexual assault and harassment both of these essential ingredients are violated. The victim is treated as an object and their autonomy is denied. Their feelings and emotions are treated as irrelevant compared to the need for gratification of the aggressor.

Not only do women suffer when their autonomy and subjectivity are denied, this denial has the power to transform a person’s self-image. If you never experience autonomy, how can you even know of its existence? If your subjectivity is constantly denied, would you not think that it really shouldn’t exist? It prevents a woman from ‘wanting’ anything more than what she has, like the fox in famous fable. The fox, unable to get at the grapes, finally decides that he didn’t want the grapes to begin with.

In many (if not most) societies, being born a male already guarantees your claim to an unearned privilege over half of the world’s population. You are proud of something that you did not achieve on your own merit. Isn’t that the worst kind of pride?

The Red Queen Effect

The Red Queen by Sir John Tenniel 

by Madeleine Kando

In Lewis Carroll's ‘Through the Looking-Glass’, the Red Queen and Alice are constantly running but remain in the same spot. 

They finally stop and Alice says, still panting a little: "Well, in our country, you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" says the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" 

That is exactly how I feel about my life right now. Like being on a treadmill, running and running, just so I can stay in place.

My days are filled with exhausting activities like taking a shower so I won’t get lice, get dressed so I won’t freeze to death, eat so I won’t dwindle away and sleep so I won’t keel over during the day. All that just to stay in place!

The abyss called entropy is lurking behind me, threatening to swallow me up. Who wants to let their fingernails grow into claws, get scabs on their scalp for want of washing their hair, have their teeth fall out if they don’t brush them.

The Red Queen is right: ‘If you want to get somewhere, you have to run twice as fast’. But who has the energy these days? I am quite content to stay in place. It’s exhausting enough.

In evolution, the Red Queen Effect, means that species have to constantly adapt in order to avoid extinction. A rat race, if you ever saw one. That also applies to me and you.

Let me give you a brilliant example: If you are unfortunate enough to be born without dimples in your cheeks, you are never going to have a go at being on TV. I wrote about that before here. But since all anchors on TV have dimples, who is going to keep their jobs? The ones with the deepest and most disfiguring dimples. They are all running in place, dimples and all, to keep their job.

Nature-Nurture: Are we born Intelligent or Stupid?

by Tom Kando

 The September 13, 2021 issue of the New Yorker has an interesting article titled “Force of Nature” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. 

It describes the work of Kathryn Paige Harden, a University of Texas psychologist. Harden’s research is about the importance of genetic inheritability of intelligence. In other words, she addresses the age-old “nature-vs.- nurture” question: Are our behavior, our personality and our achievements the result of the environment and socialization (nurture), or are they the product of inborn and inherited genes (nature)? 

 As a sociologist, I have dealt with this issue in many of my classes. That nurture is more important than nature has always been axiomatic to sociologists. How successful you are in life depends much more on environment than on heredity. However, biological determinism (nature) has gained a lot of ground in recent years. Psychology’s holy grail is the identification of the PHYSICAL location of mental faculties, whether in the brain or in one’s genetic make-up. 

There appears every decade or so research that challenges the conventional wisdom that nurture counts for much more than nature. This research suggests that genetic inheritability of things like intelligence plays a much bigger role than we are willing to admit. 

For example, in 1969, Berkeley psychologist Arthur Jensen published an article in the Harvard Educational Review   in which he argued that there is an I.Q. gap between the races, and the reason for this is at least partly genetic. Nobel laureate William Shockley agreed with this, stating that “my research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro's intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable... by practical improvements in the environment.” 

Kauai

by Madeleine Kando

We are on Kauai, my husband Hans and I. It is the oldest and most beautiful island of the Hawaiian chain. If you could wave a magic wand and wish for a total sensory experience, you would certainly conjure up Kauai. The trade wind coming from the vast ocean, softens the harshness of the blazing sun. The sound of the surf is better than any lullaby. The foaming crests of the waves lapping on shore puts one in a trance.

Then, there are the clouds. They turn pink at sunset, slowly moving across the horizon, like slow motion ballerinas in pink tutus. The coral shines through the turquoise water while the feral chickens strut about, totally indifferent to the beauty around them, getting impertinently close to get fed. All of it is so intoxicating that our life back in Boston seems like it is on another planet.

Is it pathological to be infatuated with an island? Isn’t that feeling reserved for teens and film stars?  But I cannot help it. Since we first came here, almost 20 years ago, Kauai has captivated my heart.

Today, we are taking a helicopter ride. It takes us over the interior, the jungle where Jurassic Park was filmed. We approach the ‘five sisters’, a group of waterfalls on Mt. Waialeale, the second rainiest place on earth. The pilot is having fun with us. He flies straight into the huge vertical wall of jungle, but at the last minute, veers up to the top, to avoid a fatal crash. It is an exhilarating ride, plunging into the center of the volcano. It has been dead for millions of years and is now covered with green, a deep gaping hole, where all the rain from the swamp plateau above, accumulates.

Over 5 million years ago, Kauai was born, when magma spewed from a hot spot beneath the Pacific Tectonic Plate, creating a volcanic island. Like dragging the links of a chain away from the hotspot, the island moved away and Kauai’s volcano slowly became extinct. A new island moved in its place, creating another one of the Hawaiian Islands. A map of the ocean floor shows this long chain called the Emperor Sea Mount Chain, which reaches all the way to Alaska.

It is hard to imagine that for most of her life, this beautiful island was nothing but black rock. Everything that we see, blew in with the wind, on the waves, or in the belly of a bird that lost its way. Then, millions of years in the making, as if the island was ready for inhabitants, the Polynesians came in their canoes, fell in love and established a society.

The older Kauai gets, the more beautiful she becomes. But one day, she will sink into the ocean and only an atoll will remain, like a gravestone to mark the spot. How many of these gorgeous islands have sunk beneath the waves over the past millennia?

Kauai has only one road that hugs the coastline and does not connect to itself, which protects it from the worst damage that tourism creates. On the north shore, where we are staying, there are small, funky towns, like Kapa’a and Hanalei, reminiscent of the 60’s. There are shops that sell designer rash guards and other fancy beach attire, overpriced restaurants and shave ice stands.

The Best and the Worst States

by Tom Kando 

I have ranked the world’s countries in terms of quality of life several times on this blog. Today, I want to do that   with America’s own fifty states. There is as much  chauvinism at this level as there is internationally. Just as most Europeans feel that they are better than Americans and vice versa, so Texans feel superior to Californians and vice-versa.

For the facts, I examined a recent USNews and World Report study: Best States Rankings

The study ranks the states on eight criteria:

Health Care

Education

Economy

Infrastructure

Opportunity

Fiscal stability

Crime and Corrections

Natural Environment

First, I wanted to compare blue states and red states, something which  USNews and World Report does not do. The country’s political climate is  extraordinarily polarized, and I was curious to see whether the data confirm one of my  preconceptions, namely that overall, blue states are better than red states. Well, they most certainly do:

According to 270towin, there are 18 blue states, 22 red states and  10 “mixed” states. They are located as follows:

West:   4 blue states: Washington, Oregon, California and  Hawaii.   1 red state: Alaska.

Midwest: 4 blue states: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. 5 red states: Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Missouri. 3 mixed states: Iowa, Indiana and Ohio

Rocky Mountains: 5 red states: Utah, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Arizona. 3 mixed states: Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.  ZERO blue states.         

New England: 5 blue states: Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island. 1 Mixed state: New Hampshire. ZERO red states.   

The South: 11 red states: Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana. 3 mixed states: Virginia, Florida, North Carolina. ZERO blue states.

Atlantic Coast: 5:  blue states: Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Pennsylvania. ZERO red or mixed.

These six regions are those used by the US Census Bureau.